


Five Times Natasha Didn't (Technically) Lie to John

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Times Natasha Didn't (Technically) Lie to John, and one time Natasha asked John a question</p><p>For this prompt at comment-fic on lj: <i>Avengers movieverse/Dark Knight Rises, (Robin) John Blake is the Black Widow's son</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Natasha Didn't (Technically) Lie to John

John quit the force, but he didn't quit the job.

He just didn't want to work for anyone but himself.

He tried to train, first on his own, then by seeking out the best training he could find.

Unfortunately, the best training at fighting crime is the same as the best training at being a criminal, and he couldn't quite resist the urge to make sure some of his teachers ended up locked up.

This was not always entirely successful.

He had been in a hole in the ground cell for a week, covered in grime, starving, knowing that this was the end for him. He heard sounds from above, the sounds of bones being crushed. 

He saw a woman, beautiful, swing open the hatch to his cell and a hand reaching down to him.

He rode with her in her car silently until he worked up the courage to ask her who she was.

She looked over at him and paused, then said, "I'm with SHIELD."

"That agency that got taken over by HYDRA?"

"We're rebuilding," she said curtly, and turned back to focus on the road.

John leaned back in his seat. Everything still hurt, and he wasn't sure why his fuckups merited extraction by a high level SHIELD agent (and whoever this woman was, she obviously had skills -- he wasn't even sure Bruce Wayne could have pulled off that rescue). But he didn't have anything smart to say so he decided to just shut up.

\--

The woman - her name was Natasha, though John doubted that was her real name - didn't take him to a facility. They went to some little safehouse in the country. She told him they were going to train there until he became good enough to hold his own.

He nodded, grateful. He still didn't know why he was such an important asset that he was getting this kind of training -- and he half suspected she was a bad guy (she had something in her eyes, something hard that he was afraid to think too much about). But he figured he should take all the training he could get for now and figure out the rest along the way.

Her training, of course, made every other fighter, operative and specialist he'd worked with seem like total amateur hour. On the rare occasions when he was bold (when he was in excruciating pain and exhausted) enough to ask for a break, she would frown and tell him that she'd like to take it easy but that knowing how to keep fighting when your body tries to say no would someday save his life.

Once, he says, breathless after a takedown, "I'm never going to be as good as you, am I?"

"No," she said. "Your childhood was too soft for you to ever be at this level." Most people would never describe John's childhood as fucking soft, John thought, but then, most people weren't Natasha. She continued, "But you can be better than almost everyone else. You have the natural talent." 

He nodded and got back up. He kept fighting.

\--

They continued their training, and John kept trying to find out more about her and about SHIELD. He did find evidence that she was indeed part of that organization, though he was pretty sure she let him find it for his own peace of mind.

It wasn’t long before he remembered the whole thing a while back about the SHIELD agent testifying in front of Congress. He managed to sneak his way into the nearest town at night to pilfer a phone and look up all the info he could find about her.

When he got back, she looked annoyed. He wondered if his SHIELD career was about to end in a very bloody way. 

But she said, “If I had known you were going into town to steal a phone, I would have assigned you some practice missions while you were there.”

“Sorry,” he said, wondering how she knew what he went into town for.

“Please, it’s so obvious,” she said in response to his unspoken question.

“You’re going to have to show me how to do that,” he said, laughing and shaking his head.

“I plan to. But it takes a lot of work,” she answered.

He looked startled. “Oh. So … you can train people how to … think like you? How to read people like you can?”

She hesistated, then said, “I’m not sure it can be taught. But we’re going to try.”

“Oh. So… I’m not the first person you’ve trained, though, am I?” he asked, more confused than ever.

“No. But usually I don’t train people this… thoroughly.”

“Why would you pick me then?” he said.

“You have potential. And besides, if you kept on looking for training the way you were, you would have ended up dead. Now show me how you’d hack the phone to monitor the house two streets down. If you had to do it while holding a gun on two hostiles on opposite sides of the room.”

He knew that meant the conversation was done. So he started taking apart the phone to try to figure out the answer. 

\--

It was three months of intensive training in tactics, weapons, hand to hand, climbing and acrobatics, tech, and languages before Natasha decided that he was ready for training in person-to-person interactions. John knew that there was something strange going on – no way someone like Natasha spends three months just on some random new recruit. He started to wonder if she was playing him, trying to get intel on Bruce Wayne maybe (he doesn’t have any other intel worth anything really). Then she asked if he knew anything about Batman, and he knew that she was sending a message: if she really wanted to know about Batman, she would have gotten the info already, and she sure as hell wouldn’t need to ask him. Besides, SHIELD tended to know people’s secret identities anyway.

When they went into the field, it started out with simple things, things that a grifter would do, then gathering more sensitive information. Having seen how good – how incredibly powerful – she was in anything violent, he was surprised to see that she almost never used violence in the field. She just didn’t need it to get what she wanted. 

He could also see how good she was at reading people, even better than he had realized. She could read anyone. 

John was good at reading people who were like him – he could read them like a book. Everyone else was a struggle. 

Natasha was a puzzle in that John felt – deep in his gut – that she was like him. But she was hard to read anyway. Probably she was just too much of a pro.

But he knew she was like him, that she struggled with trying to do good things when there’s a big chunk of you that wants to spiral into something worse, something dangerous and sick.

Once, he asks her about darkness. 

She tells him, “Darkness is a strength. It’s where you hide everything that you’re going to use to destroy your enemy.”

He nods and tries to remember every word.

She adds, “But even if your darkness is your strength… try not to fall into it.”

“Because I won’t be able to get out once I fall in,” he says, nodding. It was something he was always afraid of.

“No,” she says quietly. “You can get back out. But that’s not a journey I want you to have to take.” 

It’s the most personal thing she’s ever told him, and he tries not to stare, to ask for more. He gives her a smile and promises to follow her advice.

\--

Now that John had made enough progress that his training involved a lot of world travel, it was easier to find out more about SHIELD. He used all his instincts, all his skills as a detective, and the considerable skills Natasha had taught him as well.

He used them against her, technically. To find out what secrets she was keeping. He wasn’t doing it to hurt her, but he had to know. He hoped that when she found out (of course she would find out), that she would understand. At this point, he wasn’t sure if he was more afraid of her killing him or hating him.

He couldn’t believe he had let someone get under his skin like that. But he’d never known anyone to seem as … invested in him. And she didn’t seem the type to get invested too easily.

When he figured out that she had been biochemically altered, that she was at least 60 years old, at first he could hardly believe it. But then, thinking about her skills, her experience, it made sense.

He didn’t say anything to her about it.

When he kept looking into it, when he found out that 30 years ago, she had been in Gotham, he almost had a breakdown. He was supposed to be running a practice op, but he had been sneaking some time to look through some files that he’d gotten from a reluctant former spy. But he couldn’t think straight, and the whole op went to hell, and Natasha yelled at him to flee and meet at the assigned rendezvous point.

When he got there, she said, “What the hell happened, Blake?”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Why won’t you tell me why you picked me to train?” he finally gritted out.

Her jaw twitched and he knew: she knew exactly what he was really asking.

She folded her arms and swallowed. She seemed nervous (she never seemed nervous – was this for his benefit?). 

And she said, voice full of steel, “It doesn’t matter why. I am going to train you until you are capable of doing everything you want to do, and until I’m convinced that you are capable of staying alive in any situation you find yourself in. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” He was breathing hard, trying to hold back everything he wanted to say.

She paused, then said, “Then let’s go over the op you just fucked up.”

He nodded, jaw clenched.

He didn’t bring it up again. But he knew his answer.

\--

The night before he left, when she had finally decided that he was prepared to face the world without her, he thanked he for all of her help.

For a second, she looked like she was going to keep up the pretense that SHIELD was going to come knocking at his door any day now.

Instead, she asked, “Why did you stop using the name Robin?”

He looked at her for a minute, then said, “I didn’t like the name when I was a kid.”

“Oh.”

“But I like it now. I think I’ll try it on again.”

She looked at him and gave him a smile, knowing but grateful, and it was as close to an admission as she’d ever given him.

“Good luck out there. You can contact me if you need my help,” she said.

“You’ve trained me well. I won’t need your help. But I might contact you anyway.”

She nodded. “I’ll answer.”


End file.
